


long way home

by porcupins



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Sex, Maybe a little bittersweet, TENSE family dynamics, by which I mean, pillowtalk, two people undervalued by their families find worth in each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23130316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcupins/pseuds/porcupins
Summary: Isabela is more than happy to indulge Hawke in her favorite pillowtalk. Laying in bed in her partner’s mansion, cocooned by silk sheets and the smell of her lover, Isabela would offer gems of her past to Marian Hawke: flashy fragments of her history, bright like chests of gold, and Hawke would collect them all, scoop them up and hoard them. She reminded Isabela of a magpie collecting shiny trinkets for her nest—she lifted secrets from her, secrets that smelled like salt water and felt like shards of sea glass in her hands, and took them for herself.Hawke and Isabela talk about the things they have seen. They do not talk about their worth, to those around them or to each other, but the topic hums in the spaces between their words.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Isabela
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	long way home

“I’ve seen fish with wings,” Isabela murmured into Hawke’s hair one night. Hawke looked up from where she lay on Isabela’s bare chest, where she could hear Isabela’s strong heartbeat, and her blue eyes lit up.

This was Hawke’s favorite pillow-talk, Isabela knew. Laying in bed in her partner’s mansion, cocooned by silk sheets and the smell of sex, Isabela would offer her gems: flashy fragments of her history, bright like chests of gold, and Hawke would collect them all, selfishly scoop them up and hoard them. She reminded Isabela of a magpie collecting shiny trinkets for her nest—she lifted secrets from her, secrets that smelled like salt water and felt like shards of sea glass in her hands, and took them for herself.

Hawke said nothing, but shifted so her arms were crossed under her chin, and she looked up expectantly from Isabela’s chest.

“I saw them off the coast of Antiva. They had these brilliant, silvery scales, you know,” the pirate continued. “They would leap out of the water and spread their wings, and they flew alongside the ship like that, above the water.” Hawke pressed a kiss to Isabela’s collar bone, and Isabela let out a breathless laugh. “Oh, Hawke, they were so beautiful. Shined like a thousand silver pieces, each one of them. I wish you could have seen it.”

A silence fell over them, but it was warm and lazy and felt like honey. Isabela trailed her fingers down Hawke’s spine, smiling at the dark, downy hair that ran between her shoulders. Hawke told her once that previous lovers had sneered at it, but Isabela thought the little trail of hair was delightful, a secret hidden under all that armor, just for her. She had told her she thought it was cute, and Hawke laughed, but hadn’t believed her.

“In Rivain,” Hawke began slowly, “did you celebrate Summerday? I know the Chant doesn’t have quite the same following there, but is it celebrated?” Isabela could feel a story coming on, and it tingled the same way it did when she felt a storm brewing. Hawke had never shared her stories, not like Isabela had, but she realized she was hungry for them. _Is this how Hawke feels?_ She thought, _Is this what it’s like for her? Does she want to know my stories the same way I want to know hers, right now, in this moment?_

“We don’t celebrate it,” she said truthfully. And then she lied, an innocent, tiny lie, to coax the story out of her, to make her share, because it was in the air, electric, and she needed to feel it. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a Summerday festival.”

Hawke hummed thoughtfully, and Isabela felt the rumble of it in her chest. “It used to be my favorite holiday. They would light lanterns, and there was a parade every year marching towards the Chantry and singing, and every child turning thirteen that year was bundled up in white linen and sent to join the march. You know I’m not much for religion, of course, but…” she trailed off for a moment, and Isabela watched her close her eyes to think, her face screwed into a pout. Isabela ached to kiss her, but she could not risk losing the story by distracting her. Instead, she silently traced lazy circles on Hawke’s back with her index finger, waiting for a rare glimpse of her partner’s childhood. “Well,” Hawke continued, having finally found the words, “we were never anywhere for too long, and we never _really_ had the money for a good Satinalia, but Summerday was always warm and breezy, and it always felt so familiar. Everywhere we went there were the lanterns and there were the children in white. And usually there was a feast for the town, so that never hurt,” she finished, and Isabela laughed under her.

“There was a fish market,” Isabela volunteered, to fill the silence (she hoped this was turning into a game, so she could hear more of Hawke in Ferelden), “not far from my mother’s house. I would go every other day and pick up fish, usually just a little, underfed thing, but once my mother gave me a silver and told me to spend the whole thing.” Hawke laughed, and Isabela saw in her eyes that she knew the story: a kid who grew up pinching pennies was allowed one day of extravagance. Isabela wondered what Hawke’s extravagance had been, when she had this chance herself. She imagined Hawke probably spent it on a blade, and then she laughed too. “But I went to the market, and I did it. I spent most of a silver on snapper and I bought fruit on the way home, and onions, and spices, and then when I got home, all the money gone, I realized I didn’t know how to make anything but stew! I’d bought this beautiful fish and all I could do was stew it. Oh, it was just a terrible, muddy slop by the time I was done with it. Mother was _so_ angry.”

She laughed, but the memory stung a bit—she had forgotten her mother’s rage when she started telling it. She grew quiet, and Hawke watched as her expression became thoughtful and distant, and Hawke could not hear _Naishe Naishe Naishe_ in her head, scolding her in her mother’s voice. She had not thought of that name in a long time. She had hoped it would stay buried.

It reminded her of a story she would not tell Hawke: of coming home from the fish market one day in late summer, when it was hottest and her mother’s house became sticky with humidity, to find her mother standing with a heavy bag of gold. She remembered her mother’s face, distant and drawn, directed away from her, and she remembered realizing what it meant although it had never been discussed. She knew that bag of gold was her own worth—the worth of Naishe, Naishe who Isabela killed the same day as her husband, when she took his ship and sailed and never looked back.

Hawke shifted on her chest, and Isabela started back to reality. They looked at each other for a moment, before Hawke reached out and brushed a piece of Isabela’s hair behind her ear. Hawke’s voice was gentle when she spoke. “Once, in Lothering,” she said, a smile flitting across her face, “I went to the dungeons for a night because Bethany set an apple cart on fire.”

Isabela let out a bark of laughter, all thoughts of her mother gone in an instant. “You _what_?”

“Bethany was just a kid, just eleven or so,” Hawke began, “barely into her magic, and she saw—I don’t remember, I think a baby goat, but she got so excited she just couldn’t control herself, and then the stall we were standing by was on fire, and this poor man’s apples were all up in a blaze.” She shook her head, Isabela still shaking with laughter. “I couldn’t very well say, ‘sorry, sir, baby apostate got a little riled up, no harm done,’ so I told him I was just fooling with my flint, and they took me to the lord’s manor and chucked me in the dungeons until my parents paid for all those damn apples.”

Isabela howled with laughter, and Hawke grinned too, but she remembered, then, how scared she was. She was sixteen and had cut off all her hair just the week before, and she had told Malcolm she would be fine to take Bethany to the market alone. And Bethany had run back, alone, red-faced, and then her parents had pawned the last of Leandra’s jewelry to pay off the apple seller.

And Hawke remembered a story she wouldn’t tell Isabela, but it was really a dozen stories she wouldn’t tell Isabela: her mother leaning over Carver’s body, saying, “How could you let him run off like that;” her mother, the esteemed Leandra Amell, hissing, “it should have been you;” her mother watching her come home from the Deep Roads, Bethany nowhere to be seen, and the look in her eyes that said _you’re not the one I wanted._ She knew—had known for a long time—that she wasn’t the daughter Leandra wanted. And she knew, coming back from the Deep Roads (she had thought about it since leaving Bethany, every step until she made it back to Gamlen’s hovel), that she was worth less to Leandra than either of her siblings or her father, that Leandra would trade her in a second for any of them.

Hawke hadn’t noticed she had stopped laughing until Isabella tilted her chin up gently with her fingers, bringing Hawke back to the room.

“All right there, sweet thing?” She said softly, and Hawke grinned back at her before burying her head in Isabela’s shoulder and pressing kisses across her skin, over her shoulders, and up her neck to her jaw. Isabela gave a laugh, her fingers running through Hawke’s hair (short and choppy, always, ever since the summer she turned sixteen), and her breath catching in her throat when Hawke’s teeth met her skin.

“I’m all right,” Hawke mumbled into her ear, and then, before Isabela could respond, she kissed her, and they stayed like that for a moment (many moments) before Isabela remembered she’d seen a mermaid once—she wanted to tell Hawke, so she pulled away from the kiss just as Hawke shifted, and they bumped their foreheads together with a _clunk._ They stared for a moment, into each other’s eyes, before Isabela said, “Ow?” like it was a question, and then the two collapsed into laughter.

After a while, they stopped laughing, but their minds did not stray back to Bethany or Naishe, two figures long gone in different ways, but instead returned to each other, and every few minutes Hawke would kiss Isabela’s bare shoulder or Isabela would press a kiss to Hawke’s sweaty temple, until they fell asleep in Hawke’s bed, side by side, each knowing that in the morning they would wake up, still sharing a bed, and that neither of them would trade that for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> i said there would be happy sapphics. they were a little sad on the way there. but they are happy.


End file.
